Re: News - Yahoo to cut seven products including BlackBerry app

Hmm, can't remember the last time I went to Yahoo for anything. In fact, if I've visited the sites in the last year it'll have been because some other link sent me there.

The San Francisco Chronicle reports that CEO Mayer checked through Yahoo VPNlogs to see if remote employees were often checking in during their time out of the office, “Mayer discovered they were not — and her decision was made.” Since that announcement there has been quite a debate about whether teleworking is still the future of office work.

Oh great, these idiots decide to slack off and potentially screw it up for the rest of us! Then again, I'm one of those folks who teleworks because there's no office locally I can use - so if a teleworking ban comes into force then I'm out of a job entirely.

Re: News - Yahoo to cut seven products including BlackBerry app

Originally Posted by crossy

Oh great, these idiots decide to slack off and potentially screw it up for the rest of us! Then again, I'm one of those folks who teleworks because there's no office locally I can use - so if a teleworking ban comes into force then I'm out of a job entirely.

There are some people who don't abuse it. However most do in my experience, and I ran work-from-home VPNs for companies for a long time. Generally it is middle managers who are 'working from home to complete a report' are the worst urine-takers.

Combine that with the massively increased support costs for people who think it is IT's problem that they have a cheap nasty consumer grade ADSL line and they can't get any work done over it.

Re: News - Yahoo to cut seven products including BlackBerry app

Originally Posted by wasabi

There are some people who don't abuse it. However most do in my experience, and I ran work-from-home VPNs for companies for a long time. Generally it is middle managers who are 'working from home to complete a report' are the worst urine-takers.

You're right in that it's managers that can make or break teleworking - if someone's slacking off then it's their manager to blame. Just because someone's at home doesn't mean that you can't keep a track on them (and no, I don't mean spyware etc).

If you provide the right technology to keep in touch, maintain regular communication and get the right balance between remote and office working, people will be motivated to work responsibly, quickly and with high quality. Working life isn't 9-5 any more. The world is connected. Companies that do not embrace this are missing a trick

Re: News - Yahoo to cut seven products including BlackBerry app

If you read the complete story about the teleworking I think you'll see that the biggest issue is that the majority of people had been taking the p**s for a considerable time and it was this culture that Marissa was targeting not the whole teleworking culture. All she did was simply check the VPN logs to see that people were out and about supposedly teleworking but didn't actually VPN in at all during certain days. If you get a sloppy culture like that over several years and you are a paid CEO in a big company and tasked with turning it around surely you'd be mad not to tackle it at source. If that means getting people into the office then so be it. Wasabi hit the nail on the head, most people I know manage very little from home and need to be managed very carefully

Re: News - Yahoo to cut seven products including BlackBerry app

Originally Posted by 3dcandy

If you get a sloppy culture like that over several years and you are a paid CEO in a big company and tasked with turning it around surely you'd be mad not to tackle it at source. If that means getting people into the office then so be it. Wasabi hit the nail on the head, most people I know manage very little from home and need to be managed very carefully

Agreed - the problem isn't necessary the people per se, it's the culture (as Branson points out). The way that the media have sold this (and I'll acknowledge that perhaps Ms Mayer is being misquoted), MM was saying that teleworker=lazy-git, which isn't necessarily true.

The fact that other companies can get teleworking delivering productive workers kind of speaks to a lot of work being needed @Yahoo to get folks motivated. Conversely, when I was office based I remember seeing folks who seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time browsing the internet or playing Patience.

And before I get the finger pointed at me - I'm currently on a (very boring) teleconference so I'm multitasking.